Dan Greenawalt

When it comes to racing games, Turn 10 Creative Director Dan Greenawalt doesn’t buy the whole arcade vs. simulation issue. He doesn’t see the two as distinct, antagonistic genres. One isn’t better than the other. A racer is a racer, he said, it’s just the motivation that’s different.

That’s how he reconciled Forza Horizon as being part of the Forza brand despite its new open-world approach. “The series has always been about bringing gamer culture and car culture together,” Greenawalt said at a recent demo in San Francisco. “There’s the quality, innovation, social features to get them talking.”

That essential dialogue is in the overriding DNA of the series, and after playing Forza Horizon for more than an hour, Greenawalt makes a convincing argument that it exists in this spin-off.

Dan Greenawalt, creative director for Turn 10, describes the evolution of his racing series this way.Forza 2 was about credibility, he said. The team wanted to show that it could compete with the 600-pound gorilla that isGran Turismo.Forza 3 was about broadening the audience and the team succeeded by giving players various ways to gain experience and progress through the game.

When it comes to Forza Motorsports 4, Greenawalt says that’s where all the work comes together. The project sounds as though it’s the culmination of years of work. “It’s going to be a showcase,” he said. “It’s showing what the hardware can do with the graphics.”

And that definitely does happen judging from the few hours I spent with Forza 4 this month. Turn 10 has worked with Hollywood animators and together they developed a new technique called Image-Based Lighting, which gives each vehicle a more realistic look (something I thought wasn’t at all possible).